The title implies that most of the goals that Germany wanted to achieve at the beginning of WWII have been finally achieved without using any hostility. Now, after looking back at WWII and evaluating the present geopolitical situation, someone could come to the conclusion that Germany, after 70 years, won WWII. Hitler has been depicted by history, written by the winners, as a total crazy man from the very beginning of his ascent to power. But his madness became extreme only after he realized that his war was unwinnable. Certain aspects of his vision need to be examined before coming to conclusions without looking into all the historical facts. We can learn from history more if the loser’s point of view, no matter how wrong, is analyzed. After all, the losers of yesterday could become the winners of tomorrow.

From the outcome of WWI, when Germany lost the war only a few months after the USA intervention, Hitler realized that Germany was at a great disadvantage when it had to compete in manufacturing with the USA. This nation had all the possible resources in fossil fuels, raw materials and a fast growing young work force. England too was e formidable foe, with its powerful navy present in all the oceans of the world. Its dominance in the world commerce could not be easily interfered with. At the same time Hitler was still influenced by the century he was born in. In his mind, agriculture still played a major role, especially because of the food shortage during WWI and the years following the end of the war. Since Hitler saw the German people as a superior race destined to play a major role in the world affairs, the only alternative was to establish a total supremacy on the continental part of Europe. His thinking was that the USA would dominate over the Americas, England with its colonies would dominate the world commerce and Japan would dominate the Far East. The conquest of Russia was Hitler's final goal because it provided a large expanse of land to German farmers and its growing population. At the same time, its elimination would have liberated the world of the communist threat, and it would have provided all the raw materials needed for the German industry. Hitler considered the Slavic population an inferior race to be partially eliminated and partially enslaved. After the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia to the Third Reich and its alliance with Italy and Russia, France and Poland were the only foes left on the continental part of Europe. In Hitler’s plans, a separate peace would have been negotiated with England after a quick defeat of Poland and France. All this had to happen way before the USA could have had time to switch their policy from pacifistic to interventionist. After the peace with England, the entire German army would have invaded Russia, completing the so called Barbarossa campaign swiftly. At this point the entire German master plan would have worked perfectly.

The events did not go according to Hitler's planning. Though a quick victory was achieved against Poland in 1939 and France in 1940, the most important part of his plan did not fall into place. England could not be coerced into a peace agreement. The air battle over England could not be won and a separate peace could not be negotiated. At this time, the most important reason for the war and the achievement of the greatness of Germany, was the conquest of Russia, and this goal had not yet being implemented. Therefore he made the fatal decision of invading Russia while the hostility with England were still continuing. They rushed into achieving their final goal because Russia had to be defeated before a very probable intervention by the USA in the war theater.

We are familiar with how WWII ended but now we need to evaluate the geopolitical situation after seventy years from the end of that war. Russia was a major player during the cold war period that ended with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Russia, now, has a small economy about one fifth of the USA and a small defense budget, about one eight of the USA, and even the total population is half of what it used to be before the satellite states scattered at the end of the cold war. There is a low expectation for Russia to rebuild its power to the glory of the past considering that it is surrounded by the rest of Europe, the Moslem countries and China. None of these neighbor countries are likely to be incorporated soon into a greater Russia. Most of its show of force in the future will be limited to places that have strong Russian speaking minorities. Russia, at this point, should not be considered a great world power unless there is an interest in promoting a certain paranoia about its many nuclear heads and in expanding the already huge defense industry in the USA. Probably, Russia will not be a big player in the geopolitical future scenarios. The same can be said of Japan which had a brief moment of geopolitical domination in the eighties, a period that probably will not repeat itself. Nowadays the geopolitical economic power resides in three different spheres of influence. England, getting further away from Europe, is uniting with the USA, Canada, Australia and other older colonies to form one block. China and part of the Far East forms another block. Continental Europe forms the third block. These are the only three blocks of influence for the foreseeable future.

After the fall of the Berlin wall, France, in order to agree to the reunification of East and West Germany, required the German people to abandon the Deutsche mark. A new currency called the Euro, to be used in the countries of the European Common Market, was born. The individual countries of the Euro zone cannot print money and only the European central bank can do that. Germany and the other German leaning countries have the biggest influence on the economic policy. They prefer a policy of a strong Euro which is similar to the policies of the Germany of the old Deutsche mark. Being a nation with limited natural resources and an economy geared for exports, with high technology adding value to its finish products, a strong currency is preferable. This way it is possible to buy natural resources at lower prices and by controlling the manufacturing costs, they can control the price of the final product making it attractive for export. Unfortunately countries like Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Ireland were used running their economy with weak currencies before the Euro. They would often devalue their currency generating inflation that kept their national debt in check. Now these nations are stuck with large national debts, no inflation to reduce them and no money to print for jumping start their economies. These nations often called the PIIGS are in a way prisoner of the strong Euro and of the countries that advocate it. Meanwhile the old Russia satellite states, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania have become low cost manufacturing states for Germany and they are improving their standard of living to the point to be able to buy products like cars in large quantities. If we include the car company Skoda, a fully owned subsidiary of Volkswagen , all the German car companies control more than one third of the total car market of these eastern European country. Ukraine will be joining these countries and the rest of Europe, as soon as the current crisis will be over. Even by providing low labor costs, there will be an economic improvement in these impoverished areas and it will generate more expansion mostly to the German industry and commerce. In 2014, the German automotive companies will build and sell more than13 million cars and many of them will be in the most expensive range. Chemical, pharmaceutical, and electronic industries are also thriving . If we consider the fact that nowadays Germany does not need to acquire vast extensions of land for agricultural purpose, then we can say that its goal of domination in continental Europe, the same goal stated prior to WWII, has been achieved.

The reason for this article is not to criticize Germany but to see how their type of capitalism compares to the capitalism of the rest of the world. German capitalism is based on a total cooperation between management and labor. Their labor force is highly educated. Their education system is affordable to just about everyone. Those, that have no inclination for university studies, become specialized in trade schools and are provided with parallel career patterns and a good final compensation. This system provide one of the highest social mobility in the world and is the best solution against social unrest. Therefore we have to congratulate the Germans for their considerable accomplishment achieved in less than 70 years while being one of the most pacifist people on earth. Probably one of the few times in history that it has ever happened. The final question is: " Can the USA capitalism based on huge military budgets, frequent wars, expensive education and poor labor -management relations compete with German capitalism?"

MV 4-22-14

Marcello Veneziano has written the book "The Neutrino Case" and some letters to the New York Times. One of them has been chosen by the NYT picks, recently

Yesterday I saw the movie "12 Years a Slave" and it left in me a sense of void. The movie takes place just a few years before the Civil War. This filmgives the impression that the existing Law, at that time, protected free men of any color, unjustly enslaved, very efficiently and that a certain day, only a few years away, a new Law would be implemented for the protection of everyone living on the land, including slaves. In the movie, the immense power of the slave owner vanishes in front of the sheriff that comes to liberate the wrongly enslaved free man. My sense of void was due to the fact that my knowledge of history told me that the movie was portraying a false hope. According to my knowledge, starting from 1876, the African Americans had been totally descrimination free, for what concerns the Law, for only five years between 1965 and 1970. Therefore in the next paragraphs I'll try to make a case for the above statement, which many people may think is an exaggeration.

Racial segregation laws called the "Jim Crow laws" were enacted between 1876 and 1965 in the United States at the State and local levels. These laws mandated racial segregation in all public facilities in the Southern states of the former Confederacy , with a separate but equal status for African Americans. The separation in practice led to conditions for African Americans that were inferior to those provided for white Americans, considering all the economic and educational disadvantages that this law provided. Public schools did not exist in the Southern states before the Civil war. Even after the war, the Jim Crow lawsalloweda very limited budget for African Americans schools, keeping the blacks almost in a state of total ignorance. Education in general takes many generations to achieve a higher average level for any given population and the southern African Americans started this slow process only in 1965 when the separate but equal laws were abrogated. At the end of the Civil War there was a transformation of the farm labor. The liberated slaves, in the best case, became crops sharers still working the land of the rich land owners. Their life of survival presented a further disadvantage, because being no longer a property of the land owners, now they could be easily replaced by the abundant work force available. The death due to illness or mistreatment of a liberated slave was no longer considered a loss of assets, therefore their already deficient health deteriorated even further. Due to a lack of money, sharecroppers often fell in a state of perpetual debt to the land owners and were forced into involuntary labor because they never had enough money to pay off their debt.

Another scourge was inflicted on the African American population after the Civil War. It was called peonage. The southern states passed "Black Codes" to control the movement of freedmen between rural areas and cities. They often declared vagrant, those who were unemployed or even in between jobs. Under these laws, local officials arrested hundreds of thousands of freedmen charging them with fines and court costs. Prisoners were sold or leased to white merchants, farmers and business owners that would pay the cost incurred by the prisoners. The prisoners had to work for a long time without being paid, while in chains, just to pay off this unjustly incurred debt.During this period they suffered under conditions, most of the time, worse than when they were enslaved. Whites were seldom prosecuted for holding black workers against their will. It is estimated that up to 40% of the blacks in the South were imprisoned in a state of peonage in the beginning of the 20th century. In 1921, Georgia farmer John S. Williams was convicted for the death of 11 blacks working as peons on Williams' farm. Williams was the only white farmer convicted for killing black peons between 1877 and 1966.

The whites were able to keep supremacy in the South, even being outnumbered by the blacks, by passing local laws that increasingly made it impossible for the blacks to vote. In 1877 the national Democratic Party made a compromise to gain Southern support in the presidential election. A deal was made to withdraw the last federal troops from the South. The Democratic Party gained political power in every Southern State and the "Jim Crow Laws" were passed. Not too long after, between 1890 and 1910, ten of the eleven former Confederate states passed laws that effectively disfranchised most blacks from voting through a combination of poll taxes, literacy and comprehension tests and residency and record keeping requirements. Grandfather clauses, in most cases, permitted illiterate whites to vote. By 1910 in Louisiana only 730 blacks were registered to vote; this was less than 0.5% of the black male population.

The reason for the title of this paper is because in 1965, under the President Johnson administration, the law appears to have reached a true equality between races for the first time, but just five years later a new phenomena appears. The incarceration rate started ramping up in 1970. It increased from about 280,000 in 1970 to 2,260,000 in 2011. This is an eightfold increase of the inmate population while the total population increased by only 50% and the violent crime rate actually decreased. Studies, over a long period of time, have shown no correlation between crimes and incarceration rates. The US has by far the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world. In 2011, 905,000 blacks were incarcerated or 40% of the prison population, though they are only 12.6 % of the US total population. Most of the people were incarcerated on minor drug charges. The total cost of this situation, including the judicial system, the police work and the parole system is estimated to be more than 200 billion dollars per year. To get a better perception of this staggering figure we need to compare the cost of sending all these inmates to an ivy league college. Sending them to college with room and board would cost half as much. A very important fact is that even now in most of the Southern states arehabilitatedinmate, after jail time, is not allowed to vote, where in most nations even during jail time inmates keep their right to vote. Therefore, now, a considerable numberof black people living in these states are not able to participate in local, state and national elections. This means that millions of votes cannot be casted and this has a considerable impact on the election results. This situation brings us back, even if on a smaller scale, to the Louisiana of 1910, when only a very small number of blacks were allowed to vote.

Is there any connection between the high incarceration rate and the unstoppable desire to deny the black population their just voting power? Have the blacks been totally free for only five years since the beginning of their lives in the US?

More important than answering those questions it is to start immediately giving the rehabilitated inmates the right to vote. Doing so will remove any doubts on the true motive of the high level of incarceration. Second, a drastic reduction of the inmate population is needed, because no nation can prosper with such an expense. This is a case of a vicious circle of more and more inmates being generated by a correctional system that was supposed to decrease their number by rehabilitating them. Moreover having the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world is something we cannot be proud of.

Everyone, especially the elders, frets about death. The only alternative would be immortality. But is immortality that desirable? There would be no social security or pension plan that could be implemented and stay solvent for such a long time, therefore everyone would have to work forever. The pizza maker would have to make trillions and trillions of pizzas. The waiter spending trillions of hours standing on his feet serving the costumers. Our children and great grandchildren would be about our age because the time gap of a generation will not make much of a difference when compared to a million years. The holiday gatherings would require a stadium. Nobody can stand forever a nagging wife or an annoying relative therefore everybody would end up in jail and even if the sentence would have an expiration date, just about anybody will not be able to vote. There will be a dictatorship and the dictator will be there forever.

Now that immortality appears to be not so desirable, what can be said about death. Epicurus reassures us about things concerning our death. He said that our death is an event at which we do not get to participate. Therefore no need to worry about how many people will show up at the funeral, or our physical appearance or the quality of the tomb. Epicurus wrote on his grave: "I was not. I have been. I am not. I do not care." I think it means that there is no pain or consciousness before we are born and the same can be expected after death. Plus we have to admit that we have been very lucky to be born on Earth. For trillions and trillions of miles it is a pretty desolate place out there and here it is a nice place and we get to taste chocolate, bacon and have a little sex among many other pleasant things. So the "I have been" part is pretty good and the rest, as Epicurus says, we shouldn't care about it.